Recent social psychology research conducted by Mark Rubin, a researcher at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Sunday, 9 February 2014

Spock's Not One of Us! Exploring the In-Group Overexclusion Effect

Liberal or Conservative?

We all belong to many different social groups. For example, we belong to groups based on our age, gender, nationality, sexuality, and occupation, to name just a few. Most of the time, it's fairly easy to work out who belongs to which group. But sometimes it's not that clear. For example, if you had to guess, would you say that the man opposite is a liberal or a conservative? Well, social psychologists have found that your answer will sometimes depend on which group you belong to. If you're a liberal, then you'll probably guess that the man is a conservative. And if you're a conservative, then you'll probably guess that he's a liberal. This mysterious phenomenon is called the in-group overexclusion effect.

Human or Vulcan?

Now sit up straight - it's formal definition time: The in-group overexclusion effect is an intergroup effect
in which people are more likely to classify ambiguous individuals as members of
the out-group (i.e., the group that they don't belong to) than their in-group (i.e., the
group that they do belong to). So, to take a slightly less real world example, you’d be more likely to
classify the lovely Mr Spock as a Vulcan (i.e., an out-group member) rather than a human
(i.e., an in-group member), even though he is half human and half Vulcan.
(Apologies if you’re of the Vulcan persuasion by the way. My example only works if you're
human!)

Based on social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979),
Leyens and Yzerbyt (1992) proposed a motivational explanation for the in-group
overexclusion effect: People are motivated to protect their in-group from
intrusion (contamination, pollution!) by negatively-valued out-group members in order to
protect the positivity of their associated social identity and self-esteem. If those no-good
out-group members get classified as in-group members, then they'll sully your group with
their negativity and, since part of your self-esteem is derived from belonging
to a positive in-group, you're motivated to err on the side of caution and
make sure that you exclude anyone from your group who shows even a hint of being an
out-group member.

There's some good evidence in support of the social identity part
of this explanation: People who identify strongly with their in-group are more
likely than those who identify weakly to show the overexclusion effect (Castano, Yzerbyt, Bourguignon, and Seron, 2002). However, to date, there has been no direct evidence for the
motivational part of the explanation - the part that relates to the in-group's positivity and your own self-esteem. Do people excluded ambiguous others from their group in order to protect the their group's positivity and their own self-esteem? My colleague, Dr Stefania Paolini, and I aimed to test this motivational part. We made two predictions:

Prediction 1: If the overexclusion effect is caused by the
need to protect the in-group’s positivity, then it should only occur when the in-group is positive and the out-group is negative (and not vice versa) because it is only in this situation that group members would be motivated
to exclude nasty negative out-group members from their nice positive in-group.Prediction 2: If the overexclusion effect is caused by the
need for self-esteem, then people who have low self-esteem should be most
likely to display the effect because they have the greatest need for
self-esteem.

To test these predictions, we asked 122 undergraduate
students to complete
Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale. This scale includes 10 statements such as "I feel that I have a number of good qualities." Respondents are asked to indicate how much they agree or disagree with each statement.Next, participants completed a memory recall task
in which they were presented with a series of diagrams on a computer screen like
the one below. Each diagram showed two groups of people, with each person
represented by a code number from 1 to 20. One group was located inside a picture of a bucket of soapy water. The other group was located inside a picture of a dustbin full of rubbish. We asked participants to consider the people in the bucket as "clean" and people in
the dustbin as "dirty." So, obviously, the clean group was a positive group and the dirty group was a negative group.

Participants were given an
identity number (3 or 14) which they were told identified them, and this
code number appeared in one of
the two groups. So, one of the groups represented an in-group, and the
other
represented an out-group. In the diagram above, the dirty group is the
in-group because it contains the numbers 3 and 14 (the participants'
identity numbers), and the clean group is
the out-group. But in other diagrams that we presented, the clean bucket
contained the in-group members and the dirty dustbin contained the
out-group members.

For each diagram that they viewed, participants were given 5 seconds to memorize which people
belonged to which group.The diagram was
then removed, a person’s code number was presented, and participants were asked
to recall which group the person had belonged to, like this: “Person Number 7.
Clean or Dirty?” Our predictions related to those instances in which
participants made errors in the memory recall task and assigned a person
to the wrong group.

Consistent with previous research, participants
erred on the side of caution and misassigned more in-group members to the out-group than they misassigned
out-group members to the in-group. In other words, they showed the classic
in-group overexclusion effect. However, consistent with Prediction 1, this
effect was qualified by whether the group was clean or dirty. The overexclusion effect only occurred when
the in-group was clean (i.e., positive) and the out-group was dirty (i.e., negative) – the red line in the
diagram below. There was no significant overexclusion effect when the in-group was dirty
and the out-group was clean – the green line in the diagram. Hence,
consistent with Prediction 1, the overexclusion effect only occurred when the
in-group was positive and out-group was negative and not vice versa.

To test Prediction 2, we computed an index that represented
the overexclusion effect by subtracting the number of misassignments to the
in-group from the number of misassignments to the out-group. Larger positive
scores on this index indicated a larger overexclusion effect. Consistent with
Prediction 2, participants' scores on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale negatively predicted the overexclusion effect. Hence,
the lower people’s self-esteem, and the greater their need for self-esteem, and the
more likely they were to show the overexclusion effect by misassigning people to the out-group rather than the in-group.

Our results provide an important piece in the puzzle of the in-group overexclusion effect - the motivational
piece. They tell is that it's not enough to simply identify with your group to show the overexclusion effect - you also have to value your group positively. Admittedly, identification and in-group favouritism often go hand in hand, but there are some cases where they diverge. For example, members of stigmatized, low status, and minority groups might identify with their group but also recognise its inherent negativity.Interestingly, our research also suggests that people with low
self-esteem are the most likely to exclude people from their group. Transporting back to the USS Enterpise, perhaps Dr McCoy ("Bones") had low self-esteem because, as Spock observed, he was always the first to exclude Spock from the human race:

Dr McCoy: “Are you out of your Vulcan mind? No human can
tolerate the radiation that's in there!”

About Me

I've published over 60 articles in the areas of is social identity, stereotyping, prejudice, and social exclusion, including research on counterstereotypicality, ingroup identification, intergroup contact, and perceived group variability. My other research interests include individualism and collectivism, risk-taking, the need for closure, social class, and mental health. For more information about my work, please visit his research website at: http://bit.ly/QgpV4O